Beginning
by starrrz
Summary: Holmes considers how much Watson knows, and how much he refuses to acknowledge.


_Written for the 10th older_not_dead promptathon on LiveJournal. Prompt was: any fandom / any pairing / a new start._

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The dear Dr Watson has described me on more than one occasion as cold, unfeeling, indifferent. 'An automaton – a calculating machine' is, I believe, the phrase utilised in one of those charming accounts of my work he insists on placing before a vacuous public.

The problem lies not, irrespective of all I might say in the grip of ennui, with the doctor's powers of deduction, for Watson is one of the most able men I have ever known.

Rather it is the stark truth in this case that though Watson observes, he is unwilling to _see_.

He is aware of such things, I know. There is no public school in England exempt from the practice, and in Afghanistan it was not entirely uncommon, and once a violent interaction required both his discretion and his medical skills, though he has never told me as such. In our own partnership, even, there have been clients and cases, unchronicled perhaps, but certainly not unrecognised.

Yet for all that he is seen, and all he has been shown, the good doctor clings still to the ideals of staid middle class morality, convinced that if he should only live a quiet suburban life, in time he shall come to believe that he is enjoying it.

The young Miss Morstan embodies all that he has been told he should desire, and with every passing day it becomes clearer that in this battle there can be but one victor.

"You should like her if you only took the trouble, Holmes," he tells me during one visit, so casual in what had been his accustomed chair that it feels as a knife to the heart.

"I have, as you know, an aversion to women," I quote in return, cruelly hoping to force the issue though I do not look up from my pipe. Watson simply shakes his head, stubbornly guileless, and comments laughingly that I am a strange fellow.

And so it continues, through the latter months of his engagement and the honeymoon of his marriage. He refuses to acknowledge that which is so blatantly obvious and I, locked tight in the grip of unrequited emotion, allow us to verbally dance around the subject, and finally consent to take dinner with the happy couple, though it stings bitterly, and the pity in Mrs Watson's eyes is a sight never thoroughly expunged from my memory.

Matters come to a head, as indeed all such cases must, and carelessly I press tentative fingers to the purpling bruises marring his cheekbone, softened though they are by the lamplight in our – my – Baker Street sitting room. Our eyes meet, the room silent but for his shallow breathing and my quickened pulse, and what is inevitable in one moment if forgotten in the next.

"Mary will be worried," he whispers, though his cheeks are flushed, and the intense folly of this continued hoping hits me with force enough to disorientate.

He mourns for me after I fell to my undeath, the broken expression on his face confirms that for me, long before a copy of _The Final Problem_is delivered to Sigerson's hands, postmarked England. His grief unsettles me, for all the self-control the Lama taught me, and Mycroft did not have to plead for my return, as I had once told myself would be necessary.

Mary had succumbed to influenza in my absence, and Watson stood before me too thin, and too tired, so that for once it was I who chided him on the subject of health and wellbeing.

"Now I know I am dreaming," he says in response, half laughing, half tearful, and, unaccustomed as I am to displays of emotion, I embark swiftly on my official reason for coming to him so. Later, ensconced once more in the corner of London we had made our own, he touches my hand, gaze so intense I find myself fighting the urge to look away. "You are here to stay," he asks, the words laden with emotion I cannot place yet am powerless to ignore, "aren't you, Holmes?"

"Would it please you?" I manage, mouth suddenly dry though my voice sounds no different. He squeezes my hand, grins boyishly in his relief, and I think of the fitful nights spent imagining how things might have been had I been able to foresee the eventualities, or better still had guarded myself against his smile and his kind words in the first instance, and wonder to what extent he has succeeded in mastering my methods.

"Here," he says kindly after long moments, pressing a glass into my hands and moving to sit beside me. I sip at its contents, the two of us sitting in silence, mesmerised by the crackling of the fire. I am unused to this, to feeling out of my depth, lacking control of the situation. The whiskey helps to ease it, as does Watson's continued presence and, when he agrees to my earlier suggestion that we share rooms once more, the hope I had long since considered extinguished burned brightly once more in my breast.

This wasn't a new start, perhaps, but as Watson again graces me with an open, thankful smile, I hope fervently that, at the least, he can allow this to be a beginning.


End file.
